Door

Dungeon features
Air	_ Altar
# Corridor	# Cloud
#. Drawbridge	+-| Door
. Doorway	{ Fountain
| Headstone	.  Floor
>< Ladder	. Ice
# Iron bars	} Lava
} Moat	# Sink
Solid rock	>< Staircase
\ Throne	^" Trap
# Tree	- | Wall
~ Vibrating square

Doors are represented by + when closed, and - or | when open: - when the door is in a vertical wall and | in a horizontal wall. Doors are distinct from drawbridges and trap doors.

Opening

Doors can be generated locked or unlocked. Unlocked doors are opened using the open command (o), or by simply moving into them if the autoopen option is set to TRUE. Locked doors can be passed in a variety of ways:

• Unlocking by applying a skeleton key, lock pick, or credit card to the door. In Minetown, if unlocking takes you more than one turn, you may receive a warning from a watchman if they are present.
• Zapping a wand of opening or casting the knock spell at it. This unlocks the door but does not open it.
• Applying the blessed Bell of Opening.
• Breaking the door down with force, with any of the below methods. This should not be done in Minetown when watchmen or their captains are present, or if a shop is on the other side. Note that doors with "Closed for inventory" written in the dust next to them are locked doors to shops.
  • Kicking it until it is smashed to pieces.
  • Zapping a wand of striking, wand of fire, wand of lightning, wand of cold, or wand of digging at it, or casting the equivalent spells: force bolt, fireball, cone of cold, or dig at it, destroying the door. Striking and force bolt are noisy; the other methods are not.
  • Applying an axe, pick-axe, or dwarvish mattock on a door. A shop door will be "too hard" to chop into.

Door traps

At level 5 and below, about 3% of non-shop doors are booby-trapped. A door trap does 1d(2+level2) damage, in addition to stunning you, abusing strength and abusing constitution. You can check a door for traps with the #untrap command.

Closing and locking

Open doors can be closed using the close command (c). Zapping a wand of locking at it will close (and lock) it.

Doors can be locked by applying a skeleton key or a lock pick to a closed door, casting the wizard lock spell, or by using a wand of locking.

Monsters getting through

Monsters can unlock locked doors if they are larger than tiny, have hands, and have a key. You might want to dispose of keys if you lock up the Minetown watch.

Several monsters can get through any door, even a locked door.

• Giants can bust down doors.
• Tunneling monsters can bore through doors.
• Amoeboids and fog clouds can flow beneath locked doors.
• Vampires can shapeshift into fog clouds.
• Phasing monsters pass right through doors.
• The Riders and the Wizard of Yendor can unlock doors even without a key.

Also, a monster with a breath weapon of fire, cold, lightning, or disintegration can destroy a door if their breath weapon hits the door. But they usually will not attack you if there is a door between you and them.

Creation

A destroyed door, or any square leading to a corridor, can be turned into a fully functional door by zapping a wand of locking or casting the wizard lock spell at it. A destroyed door is not shown on the map, but can be detected with the near look command (:). Any destroyed bit of wall can be replaced with a door (although they cannot be created elsewhere). This stops umber hulks from getting in, although other monsters can get through.

Secret doors

Some walls are in fact secret doors, which can be discovered by searching, brute force, or magic.

Searching is done with the s key, and is aided by wearing a ring of searching or lenses, or by wielding Excalibur. Luck affects the chance of searching successfully. Applying a stethoscope to a wall will always reveal whether it is a secret door.

The brute force method involves kicking at walls, applying a pick-axe, or zapping force bolt at a likely position where a secret door might be. This consumes time and is often dangerous.

The magical method involves using a wand of secret door detection, the spell of detect unseen, or the Bell of Opening; these will immediately reveal any nearby secret doors. A blessed scroll of magic mapping reveals secret doors on the entire level.

Strategy

Avoid destroying doors

Kicking down a door makes noise. So does a wand of striking or spell of force bolt. Even if you use a quiet way to destroy a door, then you still don't have a door to use later.

If you find a locked door and don't have an unlocking tool then first try going around it.

Use doors to get out of combat

A closed door, even an unlocked one, is a good way to get out of a fight for a while -- especially in the early game.

An open door does not allow either monsters or you to pass through diagonally. This can be a great advantage when fighting multiple foes. A door like the entrance to the treasure zoo at the top of Sokoban can become a killing ground for monsters who will stream through one by one, allowing you to avoid some of their ranged attacks. Beware of wands and breath weapons, though!

Untrap the door to the Sokoban zoo

Very few doors have booby traps. But there are dozens of monsters on the other side of that door, so it is worth a few turns attempting to untrap the door so that you do not wake them up while stunning yourself in the process.

(Also, because of the way dungeon levels work, the real level of a Sokoban level is higher than the level displayed on the status bar. The level with the zoo is much higher than the threshold for booby-trapped doors.)

Exercising strength

Opening and closing doors exercises your strength every time the door resists. However, this technique is of little practical use.

Messages

You kick at empty space.

Dumb move! You strain a muscle.

You kicked a doorway with an open door, a broken door, or no door.

As you kick the door, it shatters to pieces!

You kicked a closed door so hard that you destroyed it.

As you kick the door, it crashes open!

You kicked a closed door, opened it, and broke it.

"Halt, thief! You're under arrest!"

You kicked a door open, and a peaceful member of the town watch saw you do it.

WHAMMM!!!

You kicked a closed door, but failed to kick it open. This does not injure your legs.

"Hey, stop damaging that door!"

You kicked a closed door but failed to kick it open, and a peaceful member of the town watch saw you do it, and you have not been warned yet. This is your warning.

"Halt, vandal! You're under arrest!"

You kicked a closed door but failed to kick it open, and a peaceful member of the watch saw you do it, and you have already been warned.

"KABOOM!! You see a door explode."

A monster set off a door trap, and you saw it happen.

You hear a distant explosion.

A monster set off a door trap, and it was out of your sight.

<monster> unlocks and opens a door.

You see a door unlock and open.

You hear a door unlock and open.

A monster has unlocked and opened a door.

<monster> opens a door.

You see a door open.

You hear a door open.

A monster has opened an unlocked door.

<monster> smashes down a door.

You see a door crash open.

You hear a door crash open.

A monster has destroyed a door.

The boulder crashes through a door.

A rolling boulder has destroyed a door.

You see no door there.

You feel no door there.

You attempted to untrap a doorway with no door.

This door is safely open.

You attempted to untrap an open door.

This door is broken.

You attempted to untrap a broken door.

You find a trap on the door!

You attempted to find a trap on a closed or locked door, and succeeded.

You set it off!

You attempted to disarm a trapped door, but failed.

You disarm it!

You attempted to disarm a trapped door, and succeeded.

You find no traps on the door.

You attempted to untrap a closed or locked door, but did not find a trap.

KABOOM!! The door was booby-trapped!

You set off a door trap.

<Your

The> <blast

You feel a draft.

As above, but outside your field of vision.

The door is consumed in flames!

You smell smoke.

A ray of fire destroyed a closed door.

The door freezes and shatters!

You feel cold.

A ray of cold destroyed a closed door.

The door disintegrates!

You hear crashing wood.

A ray of disintegration destroyed a closed door.

The door splinters!

Your hear crackling.

A ray of lightning broke a closed door.

The door crashes open!

You feel a burst of cool air.

A wand of striking exploded and broke a closed door.

The door remains intact.

A wand exploded, but did not destroy or break a closed door.

The door absorbs <your

the> <blast><bolt><zap>!

You feel vibrations.

As above, but you did not see it.

Ouch! You bump into a door.

You are blind, stunned, or fumbling, or you have a dexterity rating lower than 10, and you tried to walk onto a square with a closed door. This abuses your dexterity.

It won't come off the hinges.

You used the pick up command while standing on an open door's square with no items on it.

You feel an unexpected draft.

A monster dug through a door. You must have the verbose option on, and even then, you get this message only 1/3 of the time this happens.

The following information pertains to an upcoming version (NetHack 3.7.0). If this version is now released, please verify that it is still accurate, then update the page to incorporate this information.

The message for an unseen door being destroyed by a cold ray is changed:

You hear a deep cracking sound.

No message is printed at all if you cannot see the door and are deaf.

Variants

SLASH'EM

In SLASH'EM, doors can be forced open the same way chests can.

xNetHack

In xNetHack, secret doors are less likely to appear on earlier dungeon levels; they will not appear at all before level 4.

xNetHack introduces iron doors, which cannot be destroyed by most brute-force methods (such as kicking and force bolts). These occasionally replace ordinary doors as the player reaches deeper dungeon levels.

The stunning door trap is replaced by a variety of traps with effects such as wetting your inventory, burning your hands or gloves, or creating noise with screechy hinges. The full list is found at xNetHack § Trap changes.

Encyclopedia entry

Through me you pass into the city of woe:
Through me you pass into eternal pain:
Through me among the people lost for aye.
Justice the founder of my fabric mov'd:
To rear me was the task of power divine,
Supremest wisdom, and primeval love.
Before me things create were none, save things
Eternal, and eternal I endure.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.

[ The Inferno, from The Divine Comedy of Dante
                 Alighieri, translated by H.F. Cary ]

References

This page may need to be updated for the current version of NetHack.

It may contain text specific to NetHack 3.6.0. Information on this page may be out of date.

Editors: After reviewing this page and making necessary edits, please change the {{nethack-360}} tag to the current version's tag or {{noversion}} as appropriate.